CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Turkey’ Category

Cyber-Rights.Org.TR: Blogspot Blocking Order has been revoked
14.03.2011 – Entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz

Today, the Diyarbakir Public Prosecutor’s Office revoked the blocking order issued by the Diyarbakir 5th Criminal Court of First Instance on 14 January 2011 with regards to the popular Blogspot platform used by millions of people around the world. The decision will now be communicated to the Turkish ISPs and access should be back to normal within the next few days.

Cyber-Rights.Org.TR orchestrated several appeals representing a Blogspot user based in Turkey and these appeals were lodged three days before Google managed to lodge an appeal with the Diyarbakir Public Prosecutor’s Office. As the allegedly infringing blogs (goltvnet.blogspot.com, sportrhd.blogspot.com, trgoals2.blogspot.com, freesoccertrhd.blogspot.com, and izleligtvblog.blogspot.com) were removed by Google there was no further need to block access to the Blogspot Platform. A Court dealing with the appeal requested an expert opinion with regards to the claim of removal of the above mentioned blogs and the expert report backed the claims made by our legal team representing İdil Elveriş, the owner of travelmind-idilka.blogspot.com.

Dr. Yaman Akdeniz issued the following statement: “Blogspot decision should not have been issued in the first place. We hope this will be the last time access to a web 2.0 based platform will be blocked from Turkey. However, it would be naive to believe that this will be the end of it. The future remains bleak in terms of Internet restrictions in Turkey.”

Don’t even try to understand – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review: “Don’t even try to understand
Font Size: Larger|Smaller
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
ERSU ABLAK

In his speech this week, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed that he doesn’t understand why foreigners are all talking about the lack of freedom of speech in Turkey.

Justice and Development Party, or AKP, Vice President Hüseyin Çelik said Turkey was years ahead in its legislation and many times more free in terms of press freedom than the United States. All this happens in a time when journalists are being arrested and jailed for various reasons but mainly after being accused of being a member of Ergenekon, an illegal organization allegedly working to organize a military coup against the AKP. I am sure that you have read the detailed news about these journalist arrests and what they were asked about by authorities when they were taken into custody.

The indescribable nature of Ergenekon lets prosecutors blame everyone. If you know someone who is already arrested, there is a good chance that they will come for you, too, one morning. According to the six degrees theory, anyone can be linked to the Ergenoken case in the world, even the pope himself. This is exactly why many journalists began protesting the morning arrests.

However, I understand that this vagueness will go on and will spread to the government’s Internet regulations. After Aug. 22 we will have a totally different system. The government is so kind and father-like that it wants us to be fully protected from any kind of harm that the Internet can bring about. This is why they have decided to provide Internet services to us filtered from the source. It is too much hassle to ban websites one by one, therefore they will have bundles and lists. According to the current plans there will be four types of bundles available.

These will be called Standart Profile (Standart Profil), Children’s Profile (Çocuk Profili), Family Profile (Aile Profili) and Domestic Internet Profile (Yurtiçi İnternet Profili). All of these profiles will be censored to various degrees so that we will be protected just as our profile needs to be, because our government knows best.

Each profile will have two lists assigned; A black one and a white one. In the black list there will be websites that will be banned and in the white one there will be websites that are allowed to be surfed.

The government says that they ban websites at the source so that our children will be fully protected. There will be no room for the human error of parents. Banning websites will be fully automatic. However, the people who will be in charge of these practices and the standardization of establishing these lists are very vague. The government will be able to censor any website at will. You won’t even notice it.

I would also kindly like to warn any foreigners against deigning to think that the new system to be introduced on Aug. 22 violates freedoms. And please don’t voice your concerns. Our prime minister can get angry at you. In fact, don’t even try to understand it because our government is way ahead of you.”

(Via .)

Bianet: Turkey Inquired about Internet Censorship

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Turkey Inquired about Internet Censorship

The European Court of Human Rights examines two applications from Turkey regarding cases of internet censorship in 2009. Turkish authorities were allowed time till 9 June to submit a response. Internet expert Akdeniz emphasized the international importance of the decision.

Istanbul – BİA News Center
10 March 2011, Thursday

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is examining the application against internet censorship filed by Turkish nationals Ahmet Yıldırım and Yaman Akdeniz. The international court expects an item of written comment from Turkey until 9 June.

According to a written statement published by the Cyber-Rights.org.tr news site on 7 March, the ECHR merged the files regarding the access ban to Google sites and to LastFM.com on 31 January. The restrictive decision (No. 2009/337) on the Google services was given by the 2nd Magistrate Criminal Court of Denizli (western Turkey) on 23 June 2009. Access to the music sharing site LastFm.com was banned by the Beyoğlu (Istanbul) Public Chief Prosecution on 26 June 2009 (decision no. 2009/45).

On 16 February, the ECHR posted the particularities of both applications on its website together with a list of questions forwarded to the Turkish authorities.

The court allowed time till 9 June for Turkey to respond to the questions. Cyper-Rights.org.tr reported that the court in Strasbourg announced 24 April as the deadline for non-governmental organizations that applied for co-plaintiff status to submit their point of view.
Akdeniz: Important decision for all members of the Council of Europe

Assoc. Prof. Yaman Akdeniz commented the issue on behalf of the website as follows:

‘The Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu emphasized several times the decision ‘not to make a defence regarding trials (at the ECHR) on freedom of thought’. However, only in June 2011 we will see whether this political decision is also valid for applications filed to the ECHR’.

‘The Strasbourg Court examines [the applications related to] internet censorship. These two applications carry importance not only for Turkey but for all member states of the Council of Europe’, Akdeniz indicated. (EÇ/VK)

Hurriyet Daily News: European court asks Turkey to explain its Internet bans

Wednesday, March 9, 2011
ERISA DAUTAJ ŞENERDEM
ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

A European court has asked Turkish authorities to explain their use of the country’s law to ban websites, responding to applications by two complainants who say the bans violate their right to freedom of expression.

‘Users of different websites are being punished because others infringe legal provisions,’ said complainant Yaman Akdeniz, a cyber-rights activist and a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University. He applied to the European Court of Human Rights on April 6, arguing that the Turkish government’s ban on the website Lastfm.com.tr violated his rights.

The decision to consider the case is a landmark one, Akdeniz said, explaining that it was the first time the court had taken up a complaint related to Internet bans.

‘The court’s final decision will set an important precedent for all Council of Europe member countries,’ Akdeniz told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday.

Responding to the applications by Akdeniz and another Turkish complainant, the European court issued a request last month to Turkish authorities, asking them to answer by June 9, three questions of a general nature about the use of Turkish law to ban certain websites.

‘The court asked Turkish authorities for explanations regarding the application of legal provisions to ban websites,’ Akdeniz told the Daily News.

Fellow complainant Ahmet Yıldırım, a 28-year-old doctoral student at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, applied to the European court Jan. 12, 2010, saying his personal website on Google Sites, which he used to publish his academic work, had been banned by Turkey. Both Akdeniz and Yıldırım said they appealed to the European court after having exhausted all domestic legal avenues.

Both applications were made before Turkish authorities’ recent ban of the popular blogging platform Blogger. The website, a property of Google Inc., was blocked in response to a complaint by the satellite television provider Digiturk about bloggers illegally posting football matches broadcast on Digiturk’s Lig TV channel.

The decision to ban Lastfm also involved a rights dispute; authorities used Turkish Law No. 5846 on artistic and intellectual works to issue the ban, arguing that the site had been used to illegally publish artistic works to which the user did not own the rights.

According to Akdeniz, who initiated the Lastfm-related case, authorities should identify and punish individuals who break the law, rather than punishing all Internet users by issuing blanket bans on websites.

Lastfm was banned in Turkey on Sept. 19, 2009, following a lawsuit brought to court by the Turkish Phonographic Industry Society, or MÜ-YAP.

In his complaint related to Google Sites, Yıldırım argued that Turkish authorities sought to ban access to the website for breaching provisions of Turkish Law No. 5651, on the regulation of publications and copyright infringements on the Internet. He said this violates his right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Turkey’s controversial Internet bans have been a subject of much debate by experts as well as by millions of Turkish Internet users who have lost access to popular sites. Experts have criticized the implementation of Law No. 5651 and related laws to ban websites, saying that those who break laws must be tracked down and punished for their actions, rather than making all Turkish internet users pay the price.

Questions from the European court

The first question posed to Turkish authorities by the European court was related to Akdeniz’s application. ‘As a user, can Mr. Akdeniz claim to be a victim of an infringement to rights guaranteed by Article 10 of the Convention?’ it asked.

Another question dealt with whether the complainants’ freedom of expression had been infringed upon, particularly their right to receive or communicate information or ideas according to Article 10, Paragraph 2 of the Convention. The European court also asked Turkish authorities whether Turkish law permitted it to put an end to unjustified infringements on freedom of expression, and whether it had responded to the demands of Article 13 of the Convention.

Index on Censorship: Fighting political internet censorship in Turkey: one site won back, 10,000 to go

Fighting political internet censorship in Turkey: one site won back, 10,000 to go – 04 Mar 2011

With the enactment of Law No. 5651 in May 2007, Turkey has become the land of internet censorship, argues Dr Yaman Akdeniz

In January 2010, an OSCE report on internet censorship documented that 3,700 internet websites were blocked in Turkey. As of February 2011, that number is estimated to be around 10,000.

Although the infamous YouTube ban has miraculously ceased, the two and half year ban triggered three different applications to the European Court of Human Rights, all alleging infringement of freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Two further applications about blocked access to Google Sites and Last.fm are currently pending at the Strasbourg Court. Meanwhile, the Turkish courts, and the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB), an administrative body created by Law No. 5651 (entitled ‘Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Suppression of Crimes Committed by means of Such Publication’) continue to issue blocking orders.

There is no access to several well-known international websites, including playboy.com, vimeo.com, ffffound.com, and the popular blogging service Blogspot was shut off during the last few months. At the same time Professor Richard Dawkins’s website (richarddawkins.net) has been blocked since September 2008 while a related defamation case slowly progresses through the Turkish civil law court.

The most publicised of the blocked sites include Sanalika.com, a Turkish virtual world and playground; Azadiyawelat.com, the website of a Kurdish newspaper; Fizy.com, a popular music and video sharing Turkish website which won an award for best music search engine at the 2010 Mashable Awards; and 5Posta.org, a popular blog which contains articles about sexuality, sexual politics, and internet censorship.

Legal challenges

While the number of blocked websites continues to grow, legal challenges to blocking orders have also begun; for example, involving the political website (http://bugunkilicdaroglu.com) which was set up to assess the policies and strategies of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of CHP, the main Turkish opposition party.

The name of this particular blog-style site stands for ‘Today Kılıçdaroğlu’. The website was immediately noticed by CHP and Kılıçdaroğlu’s lawyers when it was launched in September 2010. Between 17 September and 01 October 2010, the site’s owner Timur Manisali wrote 12 articles on his website.

That was enough criticism for the CHP leader and his lawyers obtained an injunction to block access to the website. Manisali used his website to announce one of the lawyer’s blocking order, along with a farewell article criticising the censorious action.

The blocking order, issued by the Ankara 3rd Criminal Court of Peace, was not communicated directly to Timur Manisali, nor was he given the chance to defend himself. Furthermore, the judgment was unclear because it did not specify the reason for the decision.

In November 2010, Manisali was contacted by Cyber-Rights.Org.TR, a non-profit organisation that offers pro-bono legal assistance to victims of internet censorship in Turkey. A defence team was immediately set up, and an appeal was lodged on 3 December 2010 to overturn the blocking decision with an appellate court, the Ankara 11th Criminal Court of First Instance.

It was argued by the defence that order should be nullified as the issuing court did not have the authority to block access to the website in the first place under Article 9 of Law No. 5651.

It should be pointed out that Article 9 of Law No. 5651 provides a new procedure for internet content in violation of personal rights: the individual alleging that their rights have been infringed by a website is encouraged to seek the removal of the content from the website, but not the blocking of the website carrying the allegedly illegal content.

Article 9 does not contain any provisions on ‘blocking’ and private law matters can only result in ‘removal’ (take down of the particular infringing article), together with the publication of an apology if a Court deems it necessary. Therefore, since 23 May 2007 when the Article 9 provisions came into effect, the courts are no longer empowered to issue blocking orders with regards to private law matters, including for claims of defamation and other personal rights.

The defence in the http://bugunkilicdaroglu.com case pointed this fundamental irregularity to the appellate court. Furthermore, it was argued that the writings of Timur Manisali should be regarded as political speech and therefore, should be protected rather than censored.

The defence argued that there was no defamation on the website, and despite the claims of Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu’s lawyers to the contrary the website did not need any permission to use Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu’s name or photo on the website, or to use his name on the website’s domain name.

Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu is a well-known political figure and as the European Court of Human Rights has stated many times, the limits of permissible criticism are wider with regards to government officials and politicians. In a democratic system the actions or omissions of a politician, in this case the leader of the main Turkish opposition party, must be subject to close scrutiny.

According to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe: ‘political figures have decided to appeal to the confidence of the public and accepted to subject themselves to public political debate, and are therefore subject to close public scrutiny and potentially robust and strong public criticism through the media over the way in which they have carried out or carry out their functions’.

As to the limits of acceptable criticism, the Strasbourg Court established in Oberschlick v. Austria (no. 2) (judgment of 1 July 1997, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-IV) that:

‘they are wider with regards to a politician acting in his public capacity than in relation to a private individual. A politician inevitably and knowingly lays himself open to close scrutiny of his every word and deed by both journalists and the public at large, and he must display a greater degree of tolerance, especially when he himself makes public statements that are susceptible of criticism. [Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu] is certainly entitled to have his reputation protected, even when he is not acting in his private capacity; but the requirements of that protection have to be weighed against the interests of open discussion of political issues, since exceptions to freedom of expression must be interpreted narrowly. ‘

On 6 January 2011 the Ankara 11th Criminal Court of First Instance overturned the decision of the Ankara 3rd Criminal Court of Peace by lifting the injunction which resulted in the blocking of http://www.bugunkilicdaroglu.com.

The Court accepted the objections raised by the defence team, stating that Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu’s lawyers did not specify their objections with the website in their petition, and further, the complainants can only request the removal of specific content subject to Article 9.

It found that, in any case, the courts cannot issue blocking orders by relying on Article 9. Therefore, according to the Court the blocking order issued by the Ankara 3rd Criminal Court of Peace was illegal.

The unjustified political censorship of Timur Manisali’s website lasted nearly three and a half months. His website is now back online. In a press release he said that his criticism of Mr Kılıçdaroğlu does not exceed the limits of political discourse, and the attempt to limit his freedom of expression was unacceptable.

According to Manisali, rather than spending time to block access to his website, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and his political party should criticise the Turkish government’s internet censorship policy.

Undoubtedly the internet censorship saga will continue in Turkey, but there is some hope as the website owners are starting to fight back through these legal channels.

Dr Yaman Akdeniz is Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Istanbul Bilgi University, and Director of Cyber-Rights.Org

BBC News: Blogspot banned in football row

04.03.2011

The row is over who has the right to broadcast Turkish Super League football matches.

A row over who can broadcast football matches in Turkey has led to Google’s Blogger site being blocked.

A court in Turkey issued the ban in response to a copyright complaint by satellite TV firm Digiturk.

It complained when it discovered that some matches it was broadcasting were showing up on blogspot blogs written on the Blogger site.

About 600,000 Turkish bloggers are thought to use the Google tool to publish their personal journals.

The ban has been imposed because Turkey’s copyright protection laws allow for entire services to be shut down.

In October, 2010 Turkey lifted a ban on YouTube that had been in place for two years.

Google confirmed the Blogger ban in a statement and said those with worries about piracy should turn to its easy to use takedown systems rather than seek a wholesale shutdown.

‘The process for making a copyright claim for content uploaded to Blogger is straightforward and efficient, and we encourage all content owners to use it rather than seek a broad ban on access to the service,’ said a spokesperson.

‘That way, people in Turkey can continue to enjoy Blogger whilst we respond to the specific complaint.’

Digiturk said it went to court to protect its right to broadcast Turkey’s Spor Toto Super League games on its Lig channel. Digiturk said the ban had not curbed all piracy as other sites beyond Blogger were still showing pirated streams of football matches.

Cyber-rights activist Yaman Akdeniz told the Hurriyet news site that the ban was a ‘disproportionate response’ that would inconvenience millions of people.

‘I understand there is a legitimate concern regarding Digiturk’s commercial rights but banning all these websites will not solve the issue,’ he told the site.

Blogger becomes latest victim of Turkish Internet bans – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review

Wednesday, March 2, 2011
ERISA DAUTAJ ŞENERDEM
ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

The ban on Blogger is expected to fully go into effect within a few days unless it is successfully challenged in court.

The ban on Blogger is expected to fully go into effect within a few days unless it is successfully challenged in court.

A spat over rights to broadcast Turkish football matches has led a local court to issue a blanket ban on the popular blogging platform Blogger, angering Turkish Internet users with what experts said was a disproportionate response.

The court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır banned the website, a property of Google Inc., in response to a complaint by the satellite television provider Digiturk, which owns the broadcast rights to Turkish Super League games. Matches broadcast on Digiturk’s Lig TV channel had been illegally posted by several Blogger users on their blogs.

‘This is a disproportionate response by the court and undoubtedly has a huge impact on all law-abiding citizens,’ cyber-rights activist Yaman Akdeniz told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday, adding that millions of Turkish bloggers and blog readers would be affected by the Diyarbakır court decision.

‘[I understand] there is a legitimate concern [regarding Digiturk’s commercial rights] but banning all these websites will not solve the issue. The decision opens the way to collateral damage,’ said Akdeniz, who is also a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University.

There are more than 600,000 Turkish bloggers actively using Blogger and some 18 million users from Turkey visited pages hosted by the site last month, Akdeniz said. The ban is expected to fully go into effect within a few days unless it is successfully challenged in court.

‘If two people plan a criminal activity on the phone, should we ban the use of telephones all over the country?’ asked Deniz Ergürel, the secretary-general of the Media Association.

‘We believe this is a wrong approach to the issue and deprives millions of bloggers and Internet users from writing and sharing ideas online,’ Ergürel, who is also a regular blogger, told the Daily News on Wednesday. He added that while the violation of Digiturk’s commercial rights should not be ignored, other solutions had to be found. ‘Even cursing, threatening or cheating over the phone is considered a crime, but this does not imply access to phones all over the country would be banned if there is a case against them,’ he said.

In a press release Wednesday, Digiturk said illegal broadcasts of the league games had not stopped despite many warnings about the issue.

‘Digiturk has spent $321 million in order to get the right to broadcast Spor Toto Super League matches. However, matches [whose broadcasting rights] belong to Digiturk and Lig TV are broadcasted by certain websites, disregarding all relevant laws,’ the company said in its statement. ‘Thus, we applied to court to ban these websites, and the court decided to ban access to them, after it was proved that although all legal procedures were conducted, the violations were not stopped.’

Bloggers and their readers reacted angrily and quickly to the court decision, with nearly 9,000 users of the social-networking website Facebook joining a group called ‘Do not touch my blog’ in less than two days after the decision was announced. Similar campaigns have also been created on other websites, such as Twitter.

‘I can understand that a company tries to protect its rights when they are violated. But I cannot make sense of the banning of all blogs for content illegally used on only a few blogs,’ regular blogger Gülşen Çetin, 24, told the Daily News on Wednesday. ‘The company that is involved says it couldn’t handle the issue with Google. Of course, everybody is responsible for their own claims, but this is not an excuse for them to cause such a big censorship event.’

In addition to harming innocent parties, the court decision is unlikely to solve the copyright problem, said another regular blogger.

‘The people doing pirate broadcasting are skilled in this. Shutting down only one or a few [sites] will not solve the problem because they will find other ways to do it,’ said Güldem Zeybek. ‘How about us, the innocent bloggers? Here, without doing anything, we face the charge of [being] criminals and have to [find ways to work around the ban]. No company’s copyrights should come before me expressing my thoughts.’

Cyber-rights activist Akdeniz drew a differentiation between regular websites and platforms for user-generated content such as Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, saying the courts must be sensitive to this distinction when they make decisions. ‘In my view, access to such platforms should not be banned, whatever the cause,’ he said, adding that other technical solutions could be found to address issues of property and intellectual rights.

‘The [impact of the decision] will be censorship, although it might not have been the court decision’s final purpose,’ said Ergürel of the Media Association. He added that depriving millions of people of a way of communicating and sharing with each other could be considered a kind of censorship.

‘We would not see such a phenomenon [like this court decision] in more developed democracies, such as in the EU countries,’ Akdeniz said.

Net censors use UK’s kid-safety frenzy to justify clampdown • The Register:

It’s time to talk Turkey…

By Jane Fae Ozimek
Posted in Government, 10th February 2011 14:38 GMT

An obsession with child protection in the UK and throughout the EU is encouraging a cavalier approach to law-making, which less democratic regimes are using to justify much broader repression on any speech seen as extreme or dangerous.

That was the accusation made by academic and online legal expert, Dr Yaman Akdeniz, at last week’s Onscenity Conference in London. Dr Akdeniz, now an Associate Professor of Law with Istanbul’s Bilgi University, was concerned with what he saw as a ‘domino effect’.

He said: ‘The UK and EU are supporting measures that allow for websites to be censored on the basis of purely administrative processes, without need for judicial oversight.’

He went on to explain that even though the EU endorses very high principles when it comes to censorship, its practice often falls far short, with different working groups facing both ways on this issue.

He said: ‘Several countries within the EU operate secret block lists, which makes it even harder for individuals to know what is going on or for due process of law to be carried out.’

Dr Akdeniz, who also runs the cyberlaw site, prefaced his remarks by looking at censorship in Turkey. He noted that hundreds of sites were permanently blocked, and although the excuse given was often couched in moral terms, the actual targets for blocking appeared to depend as much on considerations of politics and commerce.

He highlighted sites including blogs critical of government, that had been blocked on grounds of being pornographic, even though their content was far softer than other mainstream pornography still freely available.

Also relevant is the saga of YouTube, banned in its entirety after it carried a clip allegedly implying that Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, was effeminate. Shortly after one court reinstated YouTube’s right to be viewed in Turkey, a subsequent court ordered it blocked again because it allegedly carried a clip of the former chairman of the opposition, Deniz Baykal, in a bedroom with a female aide.

According to international anti-censorship lobby Reporters sans Frontieres, Turkey continues to be one of the biggest banners in Europe, with some 5,000 different sites banned in their entirety at last count, including geocities.com, myspace.com and dailymotion.com.

Dr Akdeniz claimed that trends visible today in Turkey are equally applicable across the Middle East.

Meanwhile, in a further sign of how UK censorship techniques are being exported around the world, three prominent UK experts were addressing a conference in Turkey this week to provide further insights into the UK model of net ‘safeguarding’.

The programme for Turkish Internet Safety Day, included a stellar cast of Turkish speakers, plus three Brits: Prof Dr Sonia Livingstone, who lectures at the LSE and is Director of EUKids Online; Facebook’s European Political Director Lord Richard Allan; and John Carr, a United Kingdom government adviser on Internet safety policy for children, who also works with European NGO Alliance for Child Safety Online (eNACSO) and Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety (CHIS).

According to Dr Akdeniz, ‘John Carr will be exporting the British ‘way of protecting children’ from harmful content on the Internet and will probably welcome the Turkish efforts to block access to thousands of websites’.

Dr Livingstone will be looking at studies of the experiences of children and young people in in the context of new technologies. John Carr is examining self-regulatory practices and the role of NGOs in social sharing sites. ®

Flash News: last updated on 04.11.2010: entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz: Despite the earlier news that Turkey has lifted its ban on YouTube after almost 2.5 years, YouTube reinstated the four videos that were removed by a licensing agency in Germany. YouTube, in a statement circulated in Turkish late Monday night stated that the four videos did not violate its copyright violation policy and therefore they were put back into the system.

I did verify the statement and the four videos are available where they were used to be available. YouTube also announced that it continues to use a “local blocking system” and therefore Turkish users will not be able to see these videos from Turkey if YouTube remains accessible from Turkey. However, those videos will be available and accessible from outside Turkey.

It remains to be seen how the Turkish authorities will react to this action by YouTube but I strongly suspect that they will issue a new injunction to block access to YouTube.

So far, and as of 03.11.2010 no ban has been enforced on YouTube despite several misleading stories in Turkey and elsewhere. There was an attempt at banning YouTube by the lawyers of Deniz Baykal, the former leader of CHP, the opposition party yesterday. However, the allegedly obscene videos involving Baykal and his former mistress were removed from YouTube servers as they were deemed to be sexually explicit. As a result of YouTube’s removal of those videos the court injunction to block access to YouTube was not enforced.

There is no update to report as of 04.11.2010 but YouTube remained accessible for another day.

This entry will be updated as the story develops….

“Note: Nothing has changed in Turkey in terms of its censorship law. Access to approximately 8000 websites remain, and although the YouTube news is welcome, this should not be seen as a step towards democratization in Turkey. The government officials found a loophole (by dancing around the censorship law and by keeping the law as it is) and claimed copyright infringement to get the videos removed from the YouTube servers. I will write a longer piece about the whole issue sometime soon.” (Dr. Yaman Akdeniz)

BBC News – Turkey lifts two-year ban on YouTube: “Turkey lifts two-year ban on YouTube

30.10.2010

Turkey has lifted its ban on YouTube, two years after it blocked access to the website because of videos deemed insulting to the country’s founder.

Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, who is in charge of internet issues, said the government had been in contact with Google, which owns YouTube.

Mr Yildirim said there was no longer any reason to ban the website, because the offending videos had been removed.

Insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or ‘Turkishness’ is illegal in Turkey.

The video clip prompting the ban was reportedly posted by Greek users of the website and dubbed Ataturk and Turks homosexuals.

‘Start Quote

YouTube will hopefully carry out its operations in Turkey within the limits of law in the future’

End Quote Binali Yildirim Turkish Transport Minister

The move was nevertheless widely criticised by many Turks, including by President Abdullah Gul, who asked officials to find a solution.
‘Third party’

Speaking on Turkish television on Saturday, Mr Yildirim said the ban had been lifted after ‘common sense prevailed’.

‘But we didn’t get here easily – we have been through a lot in the process,’ he told NTV.

‘I hope that they have also learned from this experience and the same thing will not happen again. YouTube will hopefully carry out its operations in Turkey within the limits of law in the future,’ he added.

In a statement, YouTube said that it had received reports that some users in Turkey were once again able to access its content.

‘We want to be clear that a third party, not YouTube, have apparently removed some of the videos that have caused the blocking of YouTube in Turkey using our automated copyright complaint process,’ it explained.

‘We are investigating whether this action is valid in accordance with our copyright policy,’ the company added.

In 2007, Turkey’s parliament adopted a sweeping law that allowed a court to block any website where there was ’sufficient suspicion’ that a crime had occurred.

The eight crimes listed include child pornography, gambling, prostitution, and ‘crimes against Ataturk’.

In June, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said the law was being used to block access to more than 5,000 sites, making internet censorship in Turkey amongst the heaviest in the world.